It's that time of year -- the seasons change, the winter melts away, and the summer arrives, bringing with it sunshine, warm weather, and a bunch of movies where expertly toned movie stars save the world from certain oblivion. This is the season where the budgets balloon, the explosions blossom, and the box office becomes just as bloody as the battles on screen. Ah, summer movie season.

This year, the stakes are pretty high, with a number of high profile sequels, reboots, and franchise kick-starters all wrestling for your coveted movie-going dollars. And even though this summer might seem huge -- a super-sized smorgasbord of excessive delights -- it's something of a low-wattage precursor to next summer's seemingly endless parade of would-be game-changers. So just keep that in mind: no matter how bloated this year seems, just wait until next year.

But that's not to say that this year isn't worth getting excited about; it very much is. There seem to be a strong collection of summer movies that could rise above their sell-as-many-lunchboxes-as-possible aspirations to be something that you could actually consider special. Which, really, in a season like this, is all you can hope for.

While 2012’s “Amazing Spider-Man” was an undoubted smash, it was also the cinematic equivalent of leftover pizza: a stale, reheated approximation of Sam Raimi’s superior original. Thankfully, it seems like the sequel has decidedly more pep: we got to preview more than 30 minutes of footage recently, and the general sensation is that this movie is less emo and way more fun. Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) is still dealing with very teenage concerns, like his relationship with Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone), while also facing off by a virtual Dream Team of bad guys, including Electro (Jamie Foxx), The Rhino (Paul Giamatti), and a younger Green Goblin (Dane DeHaan). This is a fascinating junction point in the Spider-universe, since after the sequel will lead into at least two more sequels and two more spin-offs (focused on villains The Sinister Six and Venom). Expect a whole lot of Spider-content in the next Spider-decade, wall crawlers!